Clay Words

They sit beside me, inside me.
These little balls of clay.
Some are red, as hot as embers,
some a cool blue, or a brilliant green,
but all of them lined up ready
to be formed into something
that I hope to be beautiful.

Sitting here, at my desk, I often
ask myself what it is I hope to accomplish,
forming these pots and bowls of clay,
sending them out to be read, or not,
by eyes other than, or only mine.

Some of them are ugly. Some of them
scratched or tarnished with a pain
that either makes them crumble in my hands
or catches the light that certain way
that makes unseemingly beautiful objects
glow with inner radiance.

Sometimes they are already beautiful
before they even pour out of my fingers,
these balls of clay, almost fully formed
into flutes or cups or vases, just waiting
to be gilded and received by the right
pair of seeking eyes belonging to a thirsty soul.

Regardless, I am surrounded by so many
pots, brimming up, up, and over with the
emotions that made them. All of them, my children.
All of them, my own.

And while some people may never understand,
each of them, the ugly ones, the broken ones,
the beautiful ones, are all pieces of me.
Broken, crumbled, malleable, fixable, unfixable
mutable, hopeful, pieces of me.

I am made of this clay. And I make this clay.

I am the sum of all my parts, and all my parts
are made of words.